mad in pursuit journal

I figure if my sister Kathleen can be valedictorian of her Adobe
Illustrator class, there is hope for me yet.

Did you ever keep butting your head against a wall trying to learn
something? That's me and Illustrator. What bothers me is that in my
early days of computer graphics, I got my start on vector-based*
programs -- Corel Draw and what is now Microsoft Visio. Usually what you
start with is where your brain sticks.

When I started to do graphics on the web I had to switch to a bitmap*
graphics program -- first Photo-Paint, then Photoshop. It felt so loosey-goosey,
so unstructured. Took me forever to adjust to a new paradigm.

I invested in Illustrator -- maybe when I got interested in
cartooning and animation (another of my lost causes) -- because it was
touted as the creme de la creme of drawing programs.

Unfortunately, it hides all its charms.

learning Illustrator is like joining the Masons

To me, learning Illustrator is like joining the Masons or a cultish
religion -- you can't truly partake until you learn all the secret
handshakes and arcane rituals. You can do anything in Illustrator -- as
long as you've memorize the secret key combinations.

So I got out my Illustrator books and decided to start from scratch
and actually learn the basics. We'll see what transpires...

*Vector graphics: lines are calculated mathematically and can
be easily scaled up and down. Think hard-edged drawing. Bitmap or
pixel-based graphics: more like paint over the pixels in your
screen. Think photographs.